10. Make a pdf and videos for an email sequence. This can be a great OTO upsell when people subscribe to an email series that is a tutorial. “For $7, you can get this all at once in pdf & videos!”

11. Drop your sales page copy into Content Samurai and easily create a Video Sales Letter for the top of your sales page.

These are just a few ways that this collection of tools could be used in your business to create products out of thin air, drive traffic and promote your brand. a bit of thought and I am sure you could come up with many more.

It’s all about using these tools to automate and scale. they are so simple to use, you could have some V.A.s just turning out content for you. You could even sell that content as PLR as well if you wanted!

Here is where you can get these tools…

It should be noted that the discounts and one-timepayment offers were available at the time of writing this post. As they are third party products, I can’t guarantee that you will get the same deal when you are reading this.

Also, these products are all great on their own. If you only need one, it would be silly to get all three.

One way that really speeds up the content creation process is being able to talk to your computer or device and have it render your speech into text.

This has been in Microsoft and Apple operating systems for some time now. Neither has a great reputation which is why Dragon Naturally Speaking still sells for $450.

But there are a number of alternatives these days that are free and work pretty well (with a bit of practice).

First, you can dictate in Google Docs. here is where to find it…

It seems to work quite well in my tests. The only issue is what about if you are on the move?

I tried finding it in the Docs app on my mobile phone but couldn’t see it anywhere. So I started to research a bit and try a few other alternatives.

One good one (that has a lot of functionality for free) is Speechnotes.

I tried the browser version (Chrome) and I was surprised at how accurate it was. also, although the family were chatting and the radio was on in the next room, it was only picking up from my mic.

Once you have dictated your document, you have loads of choices of what to do with the file. It autosaves for you, you can export it as a text file, a Word doc, or direct to your Google Drive. You can even email it. You can also print it off if you prefer.

There is also a free Android app (doesn’t look like there is one for the iPhone – there is one that has a similar name but doesn’t look like it’s from the same people).

The free option works well but there is a very inexpensive upgrade ($7.99) that boosts the functionality.

Another mobile app alternative is Voicera. This has apps for Apple and Android and is well thought of.

There are many other options out there but, hopefully, you will have found something in this post that you can use.

Thing is, you can chat away while you are driving (rather than trying to sing along to Bohemian Rhapsody) and get emails planned out, blog post ideas, product ideas all recorded and made into text that you can edit later. Great stuff!

Now, before I begin, the product I was having a play with is not new. It was released 2 or 3 years ago but it only came onto my radar recently.

I had a quick look at the video on the sales page and decided I would buy it and give it a test.

I wanted to see if it made creating good quality content easier than all of the alternatives out there.

We all have a steady need for quality content. We have choices about how we go about creating it.

Here are the ways that people normally create new content…

We can start with a blank Word doc and write an article (having done all of the research first)

We can outsource and find someone good to research and write (usually about $70+ for a good 500 word article)

We can get hold of some really shit PLR articles and completely re-write them

I am not even going to go into spinning as it often takes as long to do that than it does to do a manual re-write.

So, what did I do?

Stage 1 – 15 minutes

First, I chose a subject (key word) for my article and plugged it into a desktop software (you can see a demo of the software in a minute – stick with me)

The software searched the web and brought back full sentences from content all over the net.

I chose which sentences I wanted to use and then spent a few minutes tweaking them and doing a bit of a tidy up to make them more unique. I quickly added a couple of sentences to link sections together.

Then I wrote a short intro paragraph and an outro paragraph.

Job done. Took me a shade over 15 minutes to get an 500+ word article from scratch that is unique and 100% usable.

Stage 2 – 10 minutes

Next I decided to re-purpose the article as video content as well so I fired up Content Samurai and dropped the article in.

I spent about 5 minutes adding a comma/full stop here and there , swapping a couple of images and changing a word here and there (swapping “video” for “article, for example).

Then I chose one of the built in “robot voices” that are bloody good in Content Samurai (I stuck with the background music that Content Samurai had auto suggested) and I hit “render”.

So within 30 minutes I had TWO usable bits of unique content.

Here they are:

Article

In this article, I will be looking at the basic thinking behind what is know in marketing terms as an “online sales funnel”, what a sales funnel is and how it can multiply your online income.

By definition, a sales funnel is the ideal process that your customers go through as they move from being someone who could potentially be a customer to becoming an actual customer.

Even if we look at a simple example, sales funnels can increase your income online just by automating your business. You don’t have to be there for each step. The funnel is doing the work for you.

In the modern world of online business, newsletter automation and sales funnels have emerged as popular marketing techniques for building up your level of trust and establishing yourself as an authority. The power of a well thought out sales funnel is massive.

While sales funnels are the backbone of a digital marketing campaign, they can also feel messy and complicated.

Although, in reality, sales funnels are simple in theory.

A prospect joins your email newsletter, usually with the “sweetner” of a free welcome gift that is highly attractive. This gift may be a report or video that solves a particular problem that is common in the niche. It may be a trial version of a software.

Whatever it is, it should be sufficient to entice someone to join your newsletter campaign.

Then automated content-rich emails can be sent to the prospect that do two things; establish your authority in the niche and soft-sell a low cost product. This is called the “tripwire” product as it is priced very low, offers high value and is pretty irresistable for people in that niche.

By purchasing the tripwire product, the lead becomes a customer and has proven two things; they have a credit card or paypal account and they are willing to invest in themselves if they are presented with the right opportunity.

The next stage would be to nurture that customer, building the “know, like and trust” factors so that they will consider investing into your core product.

That is a simple example of a sales funnel using basic automation but there are many techniques, layers and marketing tools that can be added in to make them more effective.

At the end of the day, they only need to be as simple or complicated as needed to get sales. Remember, a sales funnel is basically a series of steps designed to guide visitors towards a buying decision.

Then, it is a question of testing, tweaking and refining.

Like anything, learning how to properly and successfully execute winning online sales funnels will take time and effort.

I hope that this brief article has cleared up any confusion and busted some jargon about sales funnels. If you want to learn a lot more on this subject, there is a superb online course for beginners that walks you through each step.

here is a link so you can check it out [LINK]

And here is the video that Content Samurai spat out…

Not bad for half an hour!

So, here’s where to get the software:

First Content Constructor that I used to make the article.

Now, thinking outside the box for a moment, this could be used to create just video scripts, content-rich emails, social media content…all sorts of things.

You can see a full demo by clicking the button and I also have a discount coupon for the software through this link…

Next, you can get a 7 day free trial of Content Samurai through this link:

This is a pretty powerful combo if you want to populate a niche blog, get authority-building emails written and populate a linked YouTube channel for traffic back to the blog.

Before I continue, let me make clear that I am not talking about they “funnels” you see on product launches affiliate pages. Those are better described as “sales sequences”.

Funnels are a complete process starting with traffic sources, then the entry points (squeeze pages) leading to email sequences to sell products that, in turn, lead to further email sequences for buyer (perhaps to sell an upgrade) etc.

You can see just from that last paragraph that they can be difficult to visualize in the mind. Which is why most people plan them out on paper or on a whiteboard. Even then, with frequent tweaks and edits, it can get very messy and confusing again.

So, I have been having a bit of a test with a relatively new tool which acts like a canvas for you to plan out (and even analyse) each and every step of a funnel. There is a free version that is pretty awesome.

Have a look at this video where I show you inside Funnelytics below and click this button to get your free account…

When one of the leading email marketing platforms builds it’s own lists, do you think it would be a good idea to see how they are doing it?

They kind of know what works better than anyone, I reckon. So do you think it makes sense to copy their approach?

I sure do.

Below, is a case study of something I saw on a page on Aweber’s site. I was not logged in so it assumed I was not yet a customer. As such, I got to see how they are building their own list of prospects… Golden stuff, right?

This should be very interesting to anyone who is building lists of leads and prospects as there are a few clever things at work here. And you can easily replicate what they are doing (if you have the tools to make it easy, that is).

So, the first thing to note is that they are using a nice slide in that triggers at around 25% scroll.

I have seen so many split test results about the optimum time for a box to appear and they all seem to contradict each. probably because it depends on how engaging the content is.

I know I get irritated when I am really interested and concentrating when a pop-up interrupts me. So, in my head, if there is something that people will read to the end, then pop your box later or as an “exit intent”.

I think the key here is that it does not completely cover the content. On a bigger screen than my laptop it probably doesn’t intrude over the content at all but, because it suddenly appears, it is noticed (I tried to screenshot it on my big screen but I was cookied and I had reached the limit of return visits they had set it to show for – more on that later)

If the box can stay, it has more chance of being read and more chance of being clicked when the viewer has finished consuming the content.

On mobile, it is much more “in your face”

So, let’s have a look at the box itself.

First thing I like is that the author of the post is featured at the top – his photo and his name.

This adds a personal touch – almost like a live chat box. I can understand why they do this and I am sure this is something that they have tested out.

Next is a great headline. It is a classic alternative close.

There is no mention here of any newsletter or list. It is merely surveying the visitors according to what they want. It is a simple question.

The supporting sub-headline is a very simple CTA that is making a superb value offer. Basically, “let us know what you want and we will give it to you – for free”.

This is then followed by three choices. These choices will have been chosen by analysing the most common questions or needs that their prospects have – Don’t forget that Aweber has been doing this for 20 years so it has a pretty good idea of what potential customers may be looking for.

Before we delve into what this is actually doing, look at the choices on offer.

They know that people reading the blog post obviously have an interest in email marketing. What Aweber doesn’t know (yet) is where they are on that journey.

Are they people who have not started, people who have started and want to grow their list or people who have a list and want to increase engagement?

There is a choice for each of those possible categories.

This is called pre-segmenting. They will be added to different lists or tagged with different tags depending on which “entry point” they choose.

All of the follow-up emails and content will be specific and wholly focussed on where they are on their journey. They get the help and information designed to bring them to the point of getting a free trial Aweber account – and the reasons will be different for each of those people.

So newbies won’t be getting emails about the nuances of split-testing or advanced automation and experienced marketers won’t get emails about the beginners’ basics.

Pause for a moment to think about what is happening here. People are segmenting themselves before they have even subscribed.

Do you think that will mean open rates are higher?Do you think that will mean click rates are higher?

Of course, they are.

Now let’s have a look at what happens when a visitor clicks one of the buttons. I won’t go through each one as they look similar (obviously with different headlines).

The first (important) thing to notice is that you are not taken off the page you are on. You are halfway through reading the post and you wouldn’t want to be taken away from that to a squeeze page so the opt-in opens in the same space.

Notice how this is fully compliant with all of the GDPR rules without having silly checkboxes or great big disclaimers anywhere. The emails are actually part of the free offer “product”.

I also like the “no thanks” button on there. It shows confidence that they will want to subscribe. If it is clicked, the box simply closes.

The only thing I don’t like is the word “subscribe”. There are better words to use.

The form is only shown on a fixed number of times to ensure that visitors are not bugged by seeing the same thing time after time. You don’t want to irritate return visitors. You could, of course, present them with a different box if they have seen the first one and not taken action.

Here are the takeaways:

1. Make a box appear – the animation catches the eye – but keep it as discreet and professional as possible and personalise it so it appears more human.

2. On a content-rich page try and make it appear so it doesn’t cover up the content completely (you can’t do much about that on mobile, of course).

3. Pre-segment potential subscribers. Give choices and ask them to choose, promising highly tailored free content rather than just blindly asking them to subscribe to a newsletter.

4. Keep the whole subscription process on-page. Don’t redirect to a squeeze page. They came there to read your content, don’t take them away from it!

5. You may want to limit the number of times a box appears to the same visitor. But, if you decide to keep showing it you should at least not show it to people who have already subscribed.

So, you are probably wondering how you can deploy a lead generation system as powerful as Aweber’s on your sites and blogs, right?

Well, I will tell you this. To replicate Aweber’s site using the system that they use will cost you $99 a month (or $999 a year) and that still comes with some limitations.

Want to know a better way?

The software I use does the same job. In fact, I believe it to be more powerful than the one that Aweber currently uses.

You certainly do not need to spend $999 a year for it either!

It is not cheap, but (at the time of writing) it is still in it’s “pilot program” which means that new features are being added prior to the official public launch.

While it is still in the pilot program, you can get lifetime access for a one time fee. That means you are grandfathered in and will never have to pay another cent to carry on using this amazing software (even when others are paying a monthly fee).

The best news is, even for the agency version of this software that carries no limitations, it is less than half the price of just one year of the other platform (which does have limitations, remember).

You can get all of that power on your sites starting today.

Want to know more?

Just click here to go to the private page where you can learn more and secure your lifetime deal

I would love to hear your feedback on this. What do you think about pre-segmenting? Any observations you have just make a comment below.

If you are into selling physical products online, you probably use a platform to act as your shopping cart.

That platform is probably cutting into your profits which, on smaller items or free + shipping items can already be rather small.

Thrivecart has changed the game yet again with the roll out of their physical products capability. This update happened a couple of days ago and is phase 1 of physical product support which will be enhanced over the coming weeks with extra functions and integrations.

Already, though, it is pretty bloody powerful.

This update will be a game changer for those already involved with selling dropshipped products and products that they ship themselves. It may also prove to be something that encourages the “digital only” brigade to dip their feet into a very lucrative market.

Rather than writing the longest blog post in recent history, I felt it easier if I take you into my account and show you what is there already (remember – more being added soon).

If you have not got your own ThriveCart license, you can get a lifetime account through this special link

Recent events have brought into focus how we position ourselves when attracting leads into our online businesses.

In this post, I want to reach into the past and have a look as some models that have now become prevalent in listbuilding and ask – Is this really the best way?

Having grown up in the 60s and 70s I was the target for some wonderful marketing techniques. All sorts of stuff quickly became “must haves” purely down to the skills of top marketing and advertising executives reaching directly into the heads of impressionable young people. Like me.

I remember things like Johnny 7 toy guns, Raleigh Chopper bicycles and various types of shoes – George Best slip on shoes (made of plastic with a red sole engraved with his autograph) and “Wayfarers” – shoes which had animal tracks on the sole and a hidden compass in the heel were the big hitters.

Perhaps the most persuasive & aggressive kind of marketing (and for the least material benefit) was the various campaigns run by the big breakfast cereal manufacturers. This was war on a big scale.

Like many “wars” it all started on a fairly small scale. On the back of a box of breakfast cereal, they may have printed a rudimentary board game where you had to cut out the counters from the side of the pack and make a dice by cutting out a hexagon and putting a matchstick in the middle. Simple stuff.

But it escalated very quickly in the way that only true wars do.

Soon, there were gifts inside the packets. They were often tied in to popular TV shows or well loved cartoon characters. They were short campaigns designed to make kids pester their moms to buy a certain cereal so they could collect the full set of rubbish plastic items that had been elevated by amazing copywriters, graphic artists and advertisers into something of quite extraordinarily value.

Here’s the interesting thing about these campaigns….

The very best gifts were always found in the boxes of cereals that kids normally hated.

I remember feeling very hard done by when new campaigns for Shreddies went live as my mother refused to buy them. Only because no-one in the family could stand eating them.

It was almost like the manufacturers knew that their product was a bit rubbish and pushed the gift to front and centre to obscure and distract from this.

You know what – nothing has changed. The most attractive “free gifts” are almost always offered by the purveyors of the shittest products. McDonalds is, perhaps, a prime example.

The marketers had done a good job. People wanted the gift. Only the gift.

It was a chore to have to lug home a whole box of cereal that they got as a by-product of getting the gift. It was sad and annoying that the open box(es) of cereal, still mostly full, sat at the back of the pantry 6 months later, long after the plastic toy had been lost or discarded.

It is also a bit sad that email marketing has gone the same way.

Let me ask you a question….

When you attract leads onto your list, what are you hoping to achieve?

Here’s what your answer should be; you want to offer great value to the new subscriber through your emails and, in doing so, establish yourself as an authority in your niche over time so they will know (hopefully like) and trust you.

Then they will buy from you, right? When was the last time you bought anything off someone you didn’t know, disliked and didn’t trust?

It should be the email content that offers the value, not just the free gift. Over the last few years, however, it is the freebie – the “lead magnet”, the “ethical bribe” – that has been placed front and centre.

But is that about to change?

One aspect of the new GDPR regulations is the requirement to offer people granular consent. In other words, if your squeeze page just “sells” the free pdf, that is what you deliver. Nothing else. No ongoing unrelated sales or marketing emails. Unless the subscriber ticks a box to agree to something extra, you can only deliver what is promised.

You can’t focus on your spiffy plastic Spiderman figure and, when people get it, immediately start shovelling breakfast cereal through their letterbox. They didn’t ask for the bloody cereal. They don’t want the bloody cereal.

It becomes a harder proposition, then to convince them that the cereal is good for them and they should open it and consume it whenever you send them some.

Now, I know that there will be a whole load of marketers who will simply ignore all of these pesky rules. It will be business as usual for them as the downside of having to think about their business model and making changes will be greater than the risk of any issue coming from the authorities.

But I think that approach stifles creative thought (an leaves you open for potential legal issues – however remote that may be).

You see, I believe that selling the cereal and still offering a cool gift is the better way.

Yes, people will still probably sign up to get the free gift, just like they did before (especially if it is a sexy one), but by selling the value you are giving in your newsletter, you are re-emphasising that you are an authority, that you will help them and it would greatly enhance their results by opening your mails.

It is all a question of positioning.

Rather than just having a freebie as your reason for people to subscribe, lead with your emails and offer the freebie as a free gift – an added extra.

So instead, big up your newsletter. Like this…

“I Can Help You. I Will Help You. Sign up now to start receiving FREE [NICHE] tips, tutorials and insights and discover ways to [BENEFIT] every day!”

“And, as a thank you for subscribing, you will receive this FREE gift in your first email – [THEN BIG UP THE GIFT]”

Tips, tutorials and insights cover just about anything. You can write product reviews, link to a blog post, tell people about tools or trainings that they may benefit from (and pop affiliate links in where appropriate). The important thing is – that is what they are signing up for.

The fact remains that many will subscribe just to get the sexy freebie. That’s fine, they can unsubscribe at any time (you can even tell them that on the squeeze page). But there are two things at work here that will benefit you….

Firstly, you have been explicit in your offer – they can’t say that they didn’t know that they were signing up to receive regular emails about your niche and they have given consent for that.

Secondly, they are expecting you to send them emails. You may find that your open rate will be higher as you have planted the seed of expectation. If you do, indeed, deliver good content as you have promised to do, you will find that you will maintain that high open rate over time.

My “tutorial style” email sequences that deliver real value (and in doing so make people aware of trainings and tools that are relevant) have a much higher long term open rate and click rate than broadcasts.

Please comment with your thoughts. If you think that others may benefit from this post, please share on social media by using the share buttons just below.

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]]>https://www.barryrodgers.com/do-you-want-cereal-with-that-a-marketing-shift/feed/1My Take on GDPRhttps://www.barryrodgers.com/my-take-on-gdpr/
https://www.barryrodgers.com/my-take-on-gdpr/#commentsFri, 25 May 2018 13:55:38 +0000https://www.barryrodgers.com/?p=1727

I woke up this morning in the EU half expecting to find that the internet had disappeared.

I have not been very vocal about GDPR. But a lot of other folks are either getting their panties in a bunch or are trying to suck some money out of you to make you “compliant in a click” or whatever they promise on the sales page.

I had no plans to join in the cacophony of GDPR noise but I have been asked by a number of people so I figured I needed to make a comment.

By the way… Nothing here should be construed as legal advice. I am not a lawyer and, if you want to find out exactly what your business needs to do to be GDPR compliant then you should do your own due dilligance and/or contact a legal professional for their opinion.

I decided to make a video of a few GDPR ramblings…

So, there we are. Congrats if you managed to stay awake until the end.

Today I want to shoo away an elephant that often appears in the room when we talk about product creation.

What do you need if you want to have an online business selling digital products?

Well, some digital products to sell, obviously.

People often get stuck here. Creating products sounds difficult, scary and time consuming.

And let me tell you, if you set out to write a 300 page book, you are probably correct. Not impossible but bloody hard work and you need a certain set of skills to pull off.

Now, there are some quicker and easier ways to create products (and I will visit these and shoo away more elephants in future blog articles here) but all of them require you to have done a load of research – market research first and then research to put your product together and then you have to set about making the darn thing.

It doesn’t end there, either.

When you have your product made you then need to find your sales angle and write some compelling sales copy.

One way to shortcut a lot of this work is to look for some PLR content (or even whole ready made products) that ticks the boxes for your chosen niche.

This is where that big elephant appears, lurking in the corner of your eye over by the sideboard….

You see, there is an underlying assumption that all PLR content is crap.

OK… I will grant you that there is a lot of crap PLR out there but there are some excellent products too. Often they are products that the “while label” license is an upsell for a product that the vendor is selling in their own funnels.

Even “thin” PLR has it’s uses if you know what to look for and what use to put it to.

There are two fundamental golden rules when it comes to PLR…

In almost every case (there are a couple of exceptions) you need to change more than a buy button on a sales page you get with the product

You need to take some action – actually do something with it to take ownership and have it as your branded product. It will do no good sat on your hard drive.

To have a logical sales funnel comprising of mutually congruent products that each satisfy a real need in your chosen sub-niche is essential for creating automated online passive income streams.

Being able to intelligently use PLR products to put that together brings it in reach of people who have not had a whole career experience as an author, videographer, or sales and marketing executive.

….And that last sentence is the nub of this article. Use PLR intelligently and do useit.

Those who do will end up selling their own products that no-one would ever guess started life as components of various PLR products.

Further Information

If you want to lean how to do this, you need to grab hold of my inexpensive course “Complete PLR Mastery 2.0”

This 22 video training takes you from first principles and beginners’ steps through to advanced techniques of finding, sifting and “taking ownership” of PLR content.

There is also a section purely on business models and ideas for using PLR in your business as well as FOUR real life case studies showing what is possible with only a small amount of work

I feel liberated! Almost like I have dumped my clothes on the beach and jumped in for a nekkid swim.

I always wanted a fancy-dancy looking blog and so, a couple of years ago, after a bit of experimenting I decided to use a “it’ll do everything” theme that I bought from someone on JVZoo (I should’a bloody known, right?).

And it kind of “took over”

Putting a blog post up became a real chore. I had to double check everything or it would go out looking like someone with learning difficulties had discovered cider and magic mushrooms on the same day.

It took all of the spontaneity and fun out of posting.

Which is why I stopped doing it so often.

There is a lesson here… Keep things simple.

So now I am back to basics.

A nice simple to use blog that you can even comfortably read on a tiny mobile device if you enjoy looking at life through a letterbox.

As I plan to inject some new life into this under-used platform, I would welcome any suggestions about topic you would like me to cover.

Just make a comment below

I am busy putting the finishing touches to a new product that I am bringing out tomorrow. If you are on my list you will get an email about it. If not, I will post about it here as well.